The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) started in 2012 as a multiple organization of its original member-states such as China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The main goals of the SCO range from promoting good neighborly relations and mutual cooperation in spheres of economy, education, energy etc. to the maintenance of regional peace, security and stability.

Since Donald Trump came to power in the United States of America, tough discussions have taken place amongst the major strategists and foreign policy runners in Washington in order to devise a strategy for the war-torn country Afghanistan.

It has been a week of barking out military options, a week of 'everything is on the table', a week of threats no longer veiled. Not an example of 'cool as a cucumber', rather a red-face turning to purple with the intensity of the phrasing.

“Ethnic conflict“ has become a very fashionable notion. However, it was not always so. Indeed, in the not-so-distant past such a notion was practically unknown. In the pre-modern times, conflicts were assumed to take place between power-holders, over pieces of land. The former sought to seize, control and exploit all resources within the latter, including the population that was also perceived and treated only as yet another resource for exploitation.

Welcome to the second issue of the inaugural year of the Journal of Rising Powers. In our first issue, we focused a great diversity of issues and articles around two anchoring pieces that dealt with the South China Sea conflict, which was front and center across most global media outlets at the time.

For four decades since 1949, Chinese government vowed not to send a single soldier abroad during the peacetime. This statement sounds credible because the leadership in Beijing has followed the tenet of “never becoming a superpower”. Yet, China has been changed with the change of time after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. In 1992 Chinese leaders agreed to send its military detachments abroad as peace-keeping mission if it is endorsed by the United Nations. Since then, China has become the largest peace-keeping troops-provider among the P-5 of the UN Security Council.

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